


kill your darlings

by iRockYourSocks



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Drabble Series, F/M, Zutara Month, beware the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iRockYourSocks/pseuds/iRockYourSocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“it isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.” -allen ginsberg</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ring in the hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day one: hidden

_Her thin fingers are soothing against his scalp, her smile warm on his jaw, and if this isn’t the feeling of content, of happiness, then Zuko isn’t sure that such a thing exists in the world. His hands bunch in her wild, thick curls, and if he grins any wider he might risk ripping open his skin._

_He’s never felt like this before._

_Katara, the girl who had hated him with a passion in high school became Katara, the girl that he could find himself opening up to, and now Katara, the woman he fell head over heels in love with._

_He has to marry her, no ifs, ands, or buts._

The car ride is silent, and his hand itches to reach out for something that isn’t there. He considers turning on the radio, but the mindless babbles of radio jockeys and overdone pop tunes would do nothing for his mood.

Her smile is a warm memory searing into his mind, and if he thinks about her waiting for him he might be able to get through the day without the ever painful clench in his chest, a constant reminder of what happens when things start going too well for him.

He can still smell the ocean…

_His arms embrace her as she laughs, the melody floating in his ears. She tells him to wait for her, because she’ll only be gone for a few days and will miss him every second of it._

_Katara leans up to press her lips to his once, twice, then grabs her luggage to head for the gates. Zuko is still wearing his stupid grin as he waves and turns away to head back to his car._

_"Zuko!"_

_He glances over his shoulder at her. “Yeah?”_

_"I’ll love you forever."_

_"Yeah, me too."_

He tucks the ring back into the satin its box, gently pushes it to the back of the drawer of his nightstand.

He still can’t touch her side of the bed, because it’s one of the few things that still have her scent. Her shoes are still neatly lined in the closet, her coats sitting on hangers.

This isn’t healthy, turning their flat into a memorial for her, but this is the only way that Zuko can cope without breaking down or completely losing it.

It’s been nearly two years now, but he doesn’t think he can ever recover from this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> modern au, because what if Katara died in a plane accident?


	2. i just wanted to watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day two: sleep

It’s quiet, a far cry from the chaos that this day brought, the day they were supposed the save the world.

It was a child’s dream, really. War was never meant to be a game played with teenagers as knights and a child as the queen, royalty cast as pawns and others not even worth a piece.

Katara brushes the hair away from his soot stained face, traces a gentle finger along the ridges of his ruined face. Her lips turn up in a mockery of a smile; if she thinks of him this way, she can pretend that he’s just asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the wonder tumblr user **[nymre](http://nymre.tumblr.com)** drew this **[awesome thing](http://nymre.tumblr.com/post/75420570925)** to accompany it.


	3. my little secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day three: confession

He isn’t afraid of her, doesn’t think her a monster.

He stood by her side when she faced her mother’s killer, fought her in the catacombs, tied her to a tree.

Katara doesn’t scare Prince Zuko.

Seeing her messy curls blowing in the wind, the red of the comet highlighting the blankness in her eyes, and his deranged sister swaying behind her, cackling as she mutters about the Earth King’s invitation to tea makes him step backwards in apprehension.

Katara, blank of expression, curls up thin fingers in a bloodbending stance—

—that,  _that_ scares him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imagine an au where Katara was brainwashed by the Dai Li and became a sort of sleeper agent


	4. and i watched them blossom as we withered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day four: garden

He watches them from the shadows of a nearby pillar, eyes shaded and indecipherable. She looks happy, her skin glowing and rosy. He watches the monk wrap tattooed arms around her, whisper sweet nothings in her ear.

Zuko glances away, stares at the floor. He isn’t sure how long he’s in the corridor, but he looks up when he feels a set of fingers gently tug on the edge of his robe and trail up his arm.

Mai’s grey eyes bring him back to reality, and his lips turn up as he laces his fingers with hers and walk away from his mother’s pond, away from a future lost.


	5. stand by me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day five: sadness

Katara doesn’t know the boy with the deep bruise under his left eye, but she can tell from his uniform that he goes to the fancy private school in the city. He’s hunched over on the park bench, knees drawn, golden eyes staring at nothing. The look is familiar, so  _heartbreakingly_ familiar, that her mind was made before she even registers her legs beginning to move.

She bites her lip and shuffles over to the bench, takes the seat beside him. “You know,” she starts, “I’ve lost somebody before too.” He doesn’t say anything, but he tilts his head so that the tips of his hair brush against his eyebrows. “It’s okay to cry, sometimes.” She reaches for his hand and squeezes his hand.

He burrows his face between his knees and squeezes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> modern au, kiddie!zutara


	6. don't say a word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day nineteen: shiver

He blinks at the first sliver of light that enters the room. It’s becoming harder to see out of his good eye, his scarred eye having shut black and blue days ago.

Days, weeks, who really knows how long he’s been down here.

He can see the silhouette clearly though, standing in the doorway. He cringes and instinctively pulls on the binds that have already rubbed his wrists and ankles a raw and bleeding mess.

He’s afraid of her, this daughter of ice and snow, and there’s a reason they call her the blood queen: she’s dangerous, more terrifying than his own sister, and she does these things with the smile of a benevolent spirit.

"Still not going to talk?" she quietly murmurs, chocolate locks trailing over her shoulder. "You know, if you just tell me what I need to know, I’d let you go."

Zuko looks at the floor, the ceiling, anything but her. A cold hand firmly grips his jaw. “We’re not playing that game today,  _Your Highness_ ,” she mocks, eyes icy, “that is, unless, you want me to dance for you again.” 

Against his better judgement, the skin of his cheek not covered in uneven blotches of bruises reddens. After he first met the foreign dancer in his father’s court, all he wanted to do was get close to her, escape his family by being with her.

This definitely was not what he expected.

“ _Zuko_ ,” she croons, placing her forearms around his neck. “I thought you  _loved_ me, wanted to run away to the colonies together. Or was that just a lie too.” He grunts and refuses to meet her gaze as she runs her fingers through his greasy hair and clenches them. “ _I thought you loved me_!” She draws back, touches her fingertips to her lips and giggles.

"I see. So it’s like that today. Ignore me as if I’m not here, huh?" He doesn’t look at her, pretends he doesn’t feel her as she climbs into his lap. "This was supposed to happen, you know, some sort of a twist of fate, you know?"

No response.

"You  _do_  know, don’t you? Why they say stroke of fate rather than call it a twist of fate?” Her weight is heavy on his thighs, and he tries to turn his hips away from her. “A stroke is gentle,” her fingers clench around the hard ridges of him, her fingers a cooling balm on his heat-sticky skin. “A twist, on the other hand,” and then her hand closes in a tight fist, and she rotates her wrist jerkily. “A twist doesn’t sound so nice, now does it?”

Zuko angles his head away from her, teeth digging bloody indentions into his bottom lip as he tries to stay silent.

Katara leans forward, attaches her mouth to his sweaty neck and trails her lips up to his ear, tears her teeth into it. “You disgust me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~essentially the only reason why this is rated m, sorry if you wanted smut guys~  
> I might one day expand on this: in a nutshell, Katara was raised with the Freedom Fighters and has a crazy hatred for the Fire Nation. She captures Prince Zuko, and, well, yeah.


End file.
